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Manchester, Ohio —
The trio with strong Manchester High School football roots will be at the center of attention — literally and figuratively — at the annual Ohio North-South All-Star Classic on April 20 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus.
Former Manchester star fullback-linebacker Rex Lingruen, now the longtime coach at Liberty Center, was already slated to coach the North team in the game, which matches the top seniors from around the state.
Along with that, Div. IV All-Ohio center Tony Matteo, who is headed to West Virginia, was already selected to play in the game, just the third Manchester player in history to be so honored.
But now comes word that longtime Manchester coach Jim France will be one of Lingruen’s assistant coaches for the North. It will mark France’s third time coaching in the game, and his second as an assistant. He was head coach of the North in 1998.
“I told Rex I’m getting too old to do this,” France said.
Yeah, yeah. Translation: He’s honored to do it.
Lingruen is making his second appearance in the contest, and his first as head coach after being an assistant in 1993.
“We had eight players on that 1993 team like Pepe Pearson and Orlando Pace — what a talented guy Pace was — who were headed to Ohio State,” Lingruen said. “It was unbelievable being around all those guys.”
But as special as that was for Lingruen, this will be even more so because of the involvement of France and Matteo – two guys from his old stomping grounds. Who knows, it may be the last time Lingruen and France are together on this big stage – and it will certainly be their last time there with Matteo.
“It will be just really neat to be there and have those ties with my old school,” Lingruen said. “When I asked Coach France if he would be on the staff, I was really hoping he would say yes. It will be a great experience with him and Tony there.”
Next fall will mark France’s 41st season at Manchester, and 42nd year overall as a high school head coach. He took over in 1971 for the legendary Les “Swede” Olsson, who had coached Lingruen near the end of his legendary 25-year tenure at the school.
Such a situation could lend itself to some resentment on Lingruen’s part – the “new” man taking over for his old coach. But nothing could be further from the truth. After meeting at coaching clinics and getting to know one another, Lingruen and France have become great friends.
The trio with strong Manchester High School football roots will be at the center of attention — literally and figuratively — at the annual Ohio North-South All-Star Classic on April 20 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus.
Former Manchester star fullback-linebacker Rex Lingruen, now the longtime coach at Liberty Center, was already slated to coach the North team in the game, which matches the top seniors from around the state.
Along with that, Div. IV All-Ohio center Tony Matteo, who is headed to West Virginia, was already selected to play in the game, just the third Manchester player in history to be so honored.
But now comes word that longtime Manchester coach Jim France will be one of Lingruen’s assistant coaches for the North. It will mark France’s third time coaching in the game, and his second as an assistant. He was head coach of the North in 1998.
“I told Rex I’m getting too old to do this,” France said.
Yeah, yeah. Translation: He’s honored to do it.
Lingruen is making his second appearance in the contest, and his first as head coach after being an assistant in 1993.
“We had eight players on that 1993 team like Pepe Pearson and Orlando Pace — what a talented guy Pace was — who were headed to Ohio State,” Lingruen said. “It was unbelievable being around all those guys.”
But as special as that was for Lingruen, this will be even more so because of the involvement of France and Matteo – two guys from his old stomping grounds. Who knows, it may be the last time Lingruen and France are together on this big stage – and it will certainly be their last time there with Matteo.
“It will be just really neat to be there and have those ties with my old school,” Lingruen said. “When I asked Coach France if he would be on the staff, I was really hoping he would say yes. It will be a great experience with him and Tony there.”
Next fall will mark France’s 41st season at Manchester, and 42nd year overall as a high school head coach. He took over in 1971 for the legendary Les “Swede” Olsson, who had coached Lingruen near the end of his legendary 25-year tenure at the school.
Such a situation could lend itself to some resentment on Lingruen’s part – the “new” man taking over for his old coach. But nothing could be further from the truth. After meeting at coaching clinics and getting to know one another, Lingruen and France have become great friends.
Manchester is a small Division IV school. Liberty Center, a small Division V school that sometimes falls to Division VI, is located in Henry County in Northwest Ohio.
“We scrimmage Manchester every year,” Lingruen said. “Either we go there, or they come out here.”
Way “out here.”
“It’s a long way to Liberty Center,” longtime Panthers assistant coach Jim Robinson said with a laugh. “I think it’s the last exit in Ohio on the turnpike before you get to Indiana.”
But it’s a ride worth taking — for both schools.
“We really look forward to that scrimmage in the preseason,” Lingruen said. “Coach France has done such an outstanding job there at Manchester. He’s the best coach in the state. I just have so much respect for him.”
The respect is mutual.
“We just hit it off from the start,” France said. “He’s a great guy, and a great coach.”
There’s not much of a difference in the coaches’ ages – Lingruen is a little younger at 61, and he has been coaching at Liberty Center almost as long as France has been at Manchester. He has been head coach of the Tigers for 27 years and has been coaching at the school for 38 seasons.
And, like France at Manchester, Lingruen’s Liberty Center teams have been extremely successful. He is 220-83 overall, and the Tigers have gone to the playoffs 14 times, including last season, since he took over in 1985.
Running a wing-T offense – well, what else would you expect from a former fullback who played for the run-oriented Olsson? — the Tigers have gone to the state semifinals (final four) six times and made it to the Division V state championship game on three occasions.
The Tigers captured the state title in 1997 – the same year that Manchester made it to the Division IV title contest – with a 49-8 victory over Amanda-Clearcreek.
They lost 17-14 in overtime to Steubenville Catholic Central in the 1993 championship game, and then fell to Versailles for the 1998 state crown.
Lingruen’s son, Blake, a center-nose guard, played on the 1997 squad.
“For me, that was really neat,” Lingruen said of coaching his son.
The younger Lingruen played center at Wake Forest and spent a little time with the Detroit Lions.
His two sisters, Brooke and Brandi, were great athletes, too, in basketball, volleyball and track at Liberty Center. Brooke was a state champion in track in the discus in 1996, and Brandi was third in the discus and fourth in the shot put.
Lingruen’s wife of 38 years, Kaye, is the editor of the weekly newspaper in Liberty Center. It always helps for a coach to have a friend in the media.
Lingruen also was a standout in wrestling and baseball at Manchester and coached the Liberty Center wrestling team for 21 years, qualifying over 100 boys for the state tournament. Between Manchester and Liberty Center, Lingruen played football at Ohio Northern as a linebacker for three seasons, then was moved to running back as a senior.
Lingruen has a sister and brother who also graduated from Manchester in Nancy (now Gilson, in 1970), who resides in Canal Fulton, and Mark (1972), a former star in football – he played on France’s first team in 1971 -- and basketball who lives in North Olmsted in Cleveland’s western suburbs.
Lingruen decided he wanted to go into coaching after having wrestled and played baseball at Manchester for coach Dave Douglas.
“I had a special relationship with Dave. We were pretty close,” Lingruen said. “He would pick me and take me to practices and then take me back home. We kept in touch after I left Manchester.”
Jim Morehart, who followed Lingruen as Manchester’s fullback and also played baseball, told a story of the time that Lingruen and Douglas, a great wrestler in high school and college in his own right back in the day, had a wrestling match in the infield following a baseball practice one day.
“Rex weighed a lot more than Dave. He must have been about 250 or 270 at the time,” said Morehart, a longtime financial and estate planner in Manchester who has also served as a coach of the Panthers softball team for nearly 20 years.
“With that size advantage, Rex was moving Dave around wherever he wanted to, and Dave was just so darn competitive that he hated that and refused to give up. We all just stood there and watched. It was great – unbelievable.”
While Lingruen returns to the area several times each year to visit his sister, and will always have a warm spot in his heart for Manchester, he’s entrenched at Liberty Center and has no plans to leave anytime soon – to come back home or to go anywhere else and do anything else. He’s a football coach, for goodness sakes – and a very, very good one, too.
“I really enjoy teaching and I love coaching, and as long as that continues, I would like to keep coaching,” he said.
Then he added with a laugh, “I know my wife wants me to keep coaching. She doesn’t want me retiring and just hanging around the house.”
Not surprisingly, that’s exactly what France has said any number of times about his own coaching future at Manchester.
That means it should be a really good time for everybody involved when the two men get together – with Matteo – in April for the Ohio North-South All-Star Classic.
